Shocking footage has captured a Qantas plane missing three of the four bolts that help to hold its engine together, as whistleblowers raise concerns about the airline’s standards of maintenance.
The video, which was shared to X on Friday, showed that three of the bolts that hold the plane’s engine air duct in place were missing. The air duct was also missing its seal.
Journalist Michael West, who shared the footage, said it was supplied by a Qantas pilot. The missing parts had fallen off into the 737’s cowl, which is the removable shell that covers the engine, West added.
“It’s lucky that aeroplanes have more engines. The consequences of this, three bolts of four missing in the air duct, is that apparently a fire could have started on-board,” West told 2GB radio’s Ben Fordham on Monday.
He added that, while he had originally tweeted the plane’s maintenance had been done in the Middle East, Qantas later confirmed it was a “local stuff-up” that happened in Brisbane.
West said “to say the plane could have crashed would be too alarmist”, but cited “a lot of concern” from Qantas engineers who believed outsourcing and cost cutting made their work more difficult.
“You’ve got these problems and they are mounting and there are a lot of them due to outsourcing and cost cutting,” West said, citing unnamed Qantas sources.
Qantas confirmed the incident and said an investigation was underway as to how the defects occurred, adding that “safety is always our top priority”.
“The issue with the air duct was identified by engineers on Saturday and the aircraft was inspected before returning to service,” a spokesman for the airline said, per the Daily Mail.
“The air duct takes air away from the engine and has no impact on the operation of the engine.”
West said regulators, such as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, inspect Qantas planes before they take off and “a plane generally won’t go in the sky if there’s something wrong with it”.
But, he claimed Qantas had kept some issues under wraps, including a recent incident in which a plane took off from the wrong runway at Los Angeles’ international airport. Two pilots were stood down as a result, West said.
Get in touch — chloe.whelan@news.com.au